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Author’s Introduction

The author was one of the architects who ran Tog 2012, a new design-build summer school on the Isle of Tiree.

Micheal Holliday, ARB, RIAS, RIBA, FRSAAugust 2012

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Tog is a Gaelic word meaning many things in varying contexts. It can be used to describe hoisting the sails of a boat (tog na siùil), the way the weather will improve (togaidh an latha) or to sing a song (tog fonn). It also means to build, raise, educate and excite. This was the ambition of Tog 2012; a new live-build summer school held on a remote Scottish island for a week June 2012.

The event was hosted on the Isle of Tiree by a spirited team of architectural and engineering graduates as a response to the detachment they felt between their training and the messy realities of getting work built.

The event was inspired after a visit to the Ghost 13 conference in Nova Scotia, held on Brian MacKay-Lyons’ farm in 2011. MacKay-Lyons has held a series of design-build events since 1994, which give students the opportunity to learn timeless architectural principles through the experience of working in the “master-apprentice” tradition.

Ghost 13 focussed on the importance of place, craft and community in architecture. Speakers included a number of educational design-build programmes, such as Ghost Lab and Rural Studio, who employ alternative teaching methods to inspire an architecture which is deeply rooted in their respective landscapes and communities.

This visit was followed by a retreat to Tiree where the Tog team agreed to host their own summer school on the island to fill in some of the gaps in conventional practice and education which the team found lacking.

Tiree has been described as “Rìoghachd barr fo thuinn”; the Kingdom whose summits are lower than the waves. This name, which still appears in romantic tales, indicates a natural topography of the island which is perhaps the lowest and flattest landscape in Scotland.

Due to this terrain buildings sit prominently and group together in clustered townships. Hynish, the most southerly of these townships, was industrialised by the Engineer Alan Stevenson in the nineteenth century to facilitate the construction of Skerryvore lighthouse 11 miles, South West of Tiree.

Skerryvore has been described by Robert Louis Stevenson (Alan’s nephew) as “the noblest of all extant deep sea lights” and was completed in 1842 after dozens of stone masons from across the country and tonnes of granite from the Isle of Mull had been imported.

Stevenson’s onshore facilities, including the workshops and lighthouse-keepers cottages, are now owned by the Hebridean Trust, a charity formed, in part, to preserve such significant buildings.

These facilities were home to Tog 2012 and allowed the event to re-imagine the history of the site; as people, once again, came from afar to take part in a unique construction project.

Although the summer school didn’t compare with the heroism of Stevenson’s Skerryvore or the legacy of vital buildings created by Ghost and Rural Studio, it did succeed in its own modest ambition to understand how to tog.

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1. Hynish Pier and Harbour2. Skerryvore Lighthouse3. Brian MacKay-Lyons’ farm in Nova Scotia4. Cabin built during Ghost 7

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Given the history of Hynish and its relationship to Stevenson’s Skerryvore, the Tog team was inspired to design a lighthouse of their own which would act as a beacon for their ambitions. The structure was to be temporary and designed around standard 4800mm lengths of timber. This led to a pair of frames, 4800mm high and 2400mm wide, made of C16 Scottish Sitka Spruce, supplied by BSW Timber Group. The frames were laid out on a 2400mm square plan and tied together with 195 x 45mm cross-beams using 114mm Timberloks. The need for excessive foundations was minimised due to the temporary nature of the build; each post sat on blinded bedrock while trays filled with local beach sand and perimeter Spirafix Ground Anchors kept the structure in place. Cladding was provided by 4800mm long vertical timber fins, with concealed fixings from the inside, at approximately 200mm centres to give the building a changing sense of solidity as the tower was circumnavigated. Spax screws were used here to reduce the amount of pre-drilling and counter-sinking required. The challenge of working safely at height was overcome with the use of internal platforms which spanned between the frames and cross-beams. These platforms were built sequentially from bottom to top, negating the need for scaffolding and limiting the amount of work done on ladders. The platforms, which included a deck made from 18mm ply, tied the structure together. Intermediate steps were added between platforms to break up the change in level and create a helical ascent to the top; imagined as a spiral staircase rising to the top of the lighthouse. Issues inevitably arose on-site; not all the timber for the frame arrived, resulting in some horizontal cross-bracing being replaced with diagonal bracing and platforms being built with timber borrowed from a neighbour. In addition to this the fixings for the ground anchor connections didn’t fit so home-made bolts were fashioned from steel rod and there was settlement under the frame so one of the posts needed to be shimmed with slate.

Resolving these issues creatively on a remote island with limited resources turned out to be one of the more rewarding parts of the project and a particularly useful insight into the construction process for students who had not been involved with a project on-site before. Despite only being together for a short time, morale through-out the week was comparable to the strong ties which would have led to families and neighbours helping each other to re-thatch the vernacular cottages on the island in past generations. In Ireland, this type of collective working, called meitheal, has been written about extensively. When JM Synge described this process at work in The Aran Islands he said “... from the moment a roof is taken in hand there is a whirl of laughter and talk till it is ended, and, as the man whose house is being covered is a host instead of an employer, he lays himself out to please the men who work with him”. The participants at Tog would have made these workers from previous generations proud; in spite of the inclement weather progress was maintained to such an extent that the build finished a day early. The finished lighthouse was open to the public for the remainder of the week and was visited by people from across the island; from those who had helped by lending tools, curious neighbours who watched progress with interest or local builders who wanted to see whether a group of architects could construct anything in the rain (it turns out they can!).

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5. Making frames during Tog 20126. Frame-raising7. Making cladding panels8. Fixing cladding panels

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Hosting and attending Tog 2012 was a new experience to all those involved but despite this novelty the participant feedback showed that the event had succeeded in achieving many of its ambitions. One participant, a Masters student at the University of Strathclyde, asserted that “this experience would be useful for all student year groups and practitioners who have to be reminded what architecture actually is!”. Another participant, a recent graduate now working in practice, commented that “It was nice taking on the role of the builder, being given instructions having not designed any part of it”. The Tog team were disappointed that this type of shared, hands-on learning experience was missing from their formal training but excited that a new organisation such as theirs could seize the opportunity to feed this understanding back into mainstream education. There may even be an appetite for new models in the spirit of Ghost or Rural Studio which inspired the team from the beginning. Samuel Mocbee, founder of Rural Studio, famously said that “If architecture is going to nudge, cajole, and inspire a community to challenge the status quo into making responsible changes, it will take the subversive leadership of academics and practitioners who keep reminding students of the profession’s responsibilities”. Tog 2012 helped demonstrate that radical young architects can provide a vital link between the esoteric theories of academic education and the reality of building; or “making the lines real”, as aptly described by one participant. The Tog team may have set out with modest ambitions to host a week-long summer school in rural Scotland but through this experience are now emboldened to pursue bigger ideas for how to teach and practice. The lighthouse project has already enjoyed recognition; winning two GIA Design Awards and featuring at the New York Architecture & Design Film Festival. Meanwhile the team have been invited to lecture widely and have begun making preparations for Tog 2013. One day tog, the Gaelic word with so many uses, may be synonymous with the start of a journey to build, raise, educate and excite.

Tog 2012 was organised by Chris Hall (Roots Design Workshop), Lynne Cox (2012 Saltire Fellow), Micheal Holliday (Roots Design Workshop) and Richard Campbell (Fairhurst), with invaluable support from Duncan Roberts.

Tog 2012 was sponsored by BSW Timber Group and Spirafix Ground Anchors.

www.togstudio.co.uk

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9. Finished lighthouse, Tog 201210. Looking back towards front door of finished lighthouse11. Looking down from the top of the finished lighthouse

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12. Finished lighthouse from the Hynish Signalling Tower, Tog 2012

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13. Finished lighthouse at night, Tog 2012

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14. Frames and platforms finished at the end of Shift One

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15. Finished lighthouse at the end of Shift Two

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Team / Participants

Tog 2012 was organised by Chris Hall, Lynne Cox, Micheal Holliday and Richard Campbell with invaluable support from Duncan Roberts.

Tog 2012 was attended by:• Andrew Brown (Architect, Brown and Brown

Architects. Robert Gordon University)• Bruce Newlands (Architect, Kraft Architecture +

Research. Founder, MAKLab)• Chris Hall (Architectural Designer, Roots Design

Workshop)• Craig Johnston (Architectural Designer, NORD

Architecture)• Duncan Roberts (Architect. Walter Segal Self

Build Trust)• Fiona Beveridge (Project Manager, Diageo)• Jó Murphy (Architectural Designer and small

projects contractor)• Kathy Li (Architect, Stone Opera. Glasgow

School of Art)• Katy Burns (Part 1 Architecture Student, University

of Strathclyde)• Lewis Grant (Part 1 Architecture Student,

University of Strathclyde)• Lynne Cox (Programme Co-ordinator, A+DS.

Saltire Fellow 2012)• Martin Glegg (Independent film-maker)• Micheal Holliday (Architect, Roots Design

Workshop. MRes Student, University of Strathclyde)

• Neil Boyd (Architectural Designer, Cameron Webster Architects)

• Richard Campbell (Structural Engineer, Fairhurst. MRes Student, University of Strathclyde)

• Ruairidh Moir (Part 2 Architecture Student, University of Strathclyde)

• Zoe Tennant (Independent film-maker)

Thanks

Tog 2012 wouldn’t have happened without the assistance, inspiration and enthusiasm offered many different individuals and organisations.

The team would like to thank:• Architecture + Design Scotland• BSW Timber Group• Clare Jones + John Holliday• Duncan Roberts• Eric + May Cox• The Hebridean Trust• The Hynish Centre staff• I A MacKinnon Haulage• Ian Tainsh• John MacKinnon Builders• Jó Murphy• Jenny McKay + Simon Frith• Kevan Brown Ltd• MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects / Ghost

Lab• Mark Vale• Martin Glegg + Zoe Tennant• Roots Design Workshop• Spirafix Ground Anchors

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Pictures

1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gentles/39190899/2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/iancowe/5909940016/3. Micheal Holliday4. Lynne Cox5. Lynne Cox6. Micheal Holliday7. Martin Glegg8. Neil Boyd9. Neil Boyd10. Neil Boyd11. Neil Boyd12. Ruairidh Moir13. Jó Murphy14. Martin Glegg15. Martin Glegg